Impure and Worldly Geography:¹ The Africanist Discourse of the Royal Geographical Society, 1831–73

The written networks through which knowledge is produced and circulated offer a focus for a theoretically informed critique of the formation of modern geographical knowledge. Drawing on deconstruction and colonial discourse theory, this paper presents a reading of the Royal Geographical Society's (RGS) published record of nineteenth‐century African exploration. This discourse posits a racially unmarked subject‐position as the condition of scientific discussion. The Society's geographical knowledge is shown to have been formed through the effacement of alternative subject‐positions and the appropriation of other ways of knowing. It is suggested that closer attention to the discursive structures of written networks of knowledge might inform a more nuanced understanding of the reproduction of disciplined knowledge.